


Chocolate Bittersweet

by Sholio



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chocolate, F/F, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25306018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: In a little tourist town on the Norway coast, Suzie steals a box of chocolates.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper/Suzie Costello
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16
Collections: Eat Drink and Make Merry 2020





	Chocolate Bittersweet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheseusInTheMaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/gifts).



In a little tourist town on the Norway coast, Suzie steals a box of chocolates. It's spontaneous and unplanned. She tucks them under her coat while pretending to browse in the small sweetshop, and leaves without buying anything.

She _can't_ buy anything. She has no local currency -- no money at all, actually. She has no passport, no ID. They have a small amount of quid from Gwen's wallet that Suzie has decided to save for emergencies. They also have Gwen's credit cards and bank card, but Suzie knows those are too much of a risk. Torchwood will be monitoring that sort of thing.

The chocolates are a risk, too. She was supposed to be getting breakfast. But she couldn't help herself. She thinks it might help coax Gwen to eat, getting her a present. Gwen hasn't been eating, and Suzie worries about it.

She reaches up reflexively and touches the aching spot, swollen and spongy, at the back of her skull. It's like a bruise that never heals.

Does it throb less this morning? she wonders. Or has she merely grown used to it?

Gwen's life is sustaining both of them. Gwen must eat -- beautiful, bright-eyed, vital Gwen, who has so much life to give. Beautiful Gwen, who makes the world so much better by being in it. She mustn't die.

It's a beautiful morning, and the air smells of salt spray and echoes with the cries of gulls. At the end of the block of little shops, bright in the morning sun, there is a small store that's presumably the Norwegian equivalent of a One Stop. Suzie wanders in, one eye out for cameras. She tries on some sunglasses, quietly shoplifts a tin of stew, some packets of peanuts, a packet of onion-flavored crisps. She eyes the paracetamol but it's in a bad location, right up at the counter, not worth the risk.

The counter girl leans over and asks her a question in Norwegian. Suzie shakes her head and hastily pushes her way out into the morning sun. 

She wants more than this: she wants coffee, she wants a hot meal, she wants something better to wear than a coat that's filthy and stained and makes her look like she's sleeping rough. It's true, but she still doesn't like it. She walks past a shop full of warm-looking coats and fuzzy, bright-colored vests, and clutches her stained coat tightly around herself. She can't think of a way to steal those without being caught. The stolen food bumps in her pockets. She curls her fingers around the edge of the chocolate box and hopes Gwen likes it.

She's surprised at how easily she's picked this up. Funny how you do what you have to, when life itself is at stake.

She shoplifted once as a teenager. With her small fingers, she lifted a chocolate bar, tingling with daring. She could easily have afforded it with her pocket money, but she wanted to find out what taking it without paying was like. Only that.

She still remembers the rush of exhilaration changing to a cold wash of terror as a man's voice shouted, "Oi! Girl! Watchu doin' there?"

Her father had ... well. Put a stop to _that_ , hadn't he? She'd not tried again, until these past couple of weeks.

Her lips press into a thin line, and then she smiles, just a little, at the memory of his last gurgling breaths.

_I know where you went, Dad. The dark. I've been there. I'm not going back. Not yet. But you're there forever._

_And I'm here, in the sun._

* * *

Their hiding place is an abandoned fish-processing plant, a short walk from the little boardwalk that passes for a downtown.

Suzie checks to be sure no one is following her before she pushes her way inside through the unlocked side door. Torchwood _will_ come. But Torchwood isn't all-seeing or all-powerful, and they're not here yet.

"Gwen?" she calls softly.

She unbarricades the door of the room where she left Gwen, the old office, which still has a musty couch with sagging springs, piled with canvas fishermen's coats that Suzie found in a different part of the warehouse. The coats are tatty and even more stained than the one she has on, and smell strongly of fish, but she and Gwen have been fairly comfortable these last couple of days, bundled up together, keeping each other warm.

"Gwen, love? I'm back." 

There is a flurry of activity inside. When Suzie opens the door, she finds Gwen sitting up at the office's old steel desk, having clearly just pushed aside the broken radio, now in the process of pulling musty old papers over it.

"That doesn't work," Suzie says, looking at Gwen with a critical eye. Gwen has a coat wrapped around herself; she's pale and shivering. The back of her hair looks damp and matted, but it's not actually seeping anymore. It hasn't for days. Suzie thinks this is a good sign, because her headache doesn't seem to have got worse, at least not measurably. And Gwen is less pale and weak, less wobbly. She'd be so much better if she'd only eat.

"I know, I sussed that out on my own," Gwen says, stubborn and defiant to the last. "Suzie, we have to call Torchwood. They'll help us. They'll help _you."_

"You know the only kind of help they'll give me. And you, now. Here, you should sit down somewhere more comfortable."

Gwen tries to resist when Suzie helps her up, but it's a weak resistance, token only, and then she leans on Suzie's shoulder, her head resting against Suzie's neck. Something goes through Suzie's chest, a sweet painful tenderness, at that small intimacy.

She sits Gwen on the couch. "I brought you some things," she says, unloading her pockets. "Did you drink? I left some water here."

Gwen draws in a shuddering breath. "A little. Suzie ... _please._ I won't let them hurt you. Can you get me a phone ... please? We need them. They can fix this, Suzie."

"They can't help us," Suzie says. "Me or you. You still think of them as if they're on your side. But they're not, Gwen. We've walked across the line, and we're on the other side now, and you _know_ what Torchwood does to people on the other side of that line."

"I ..." Gwen begins, and then she's quiet, her hands clasped between her knees. She's beginning to understand, Suzie thinks. She's beginning to understand the line she's crossed.

Suzie still remembers, with a feeling that is both sharp and tender, the moment when Gwen crossed the line. When Gwen got onto that stolen boat with her. Gwen could have betrayed her, called their captain, tried to resist long enough for Jack to get there -- and they both know what would have happened then: Suzie would have died, again. Sent back into the dark. 

But Gwen, weak and dying though she was, made that choice, bought both of them that little bit of extra time -- and now here they are, after a long few weeks of hopscotching up the coast and across a stormy sea. Somehow still alive, both of them. Still free of Torchwood, both of them. And Suzie is starting to have a cautious hope that they can stay free, get somewhere better, begin building their lives up again. They can get better. People can walk barefoot through snow and barbed wire, and come out the other side. But first they have to survive today, and then tomorrow.

"Gwen," she says. "Gwen, look what I got you."

She places the box hopefully in Gwen's lap. She wishes she had better tools to build a house of tenderness and love than the tools she was given. But she doesn't; she grew up with that cruel bastard of a father who died in a hospital bed with Suzie's own hand on his ventilator, and what she found after that was the meat grinder of Torchwood, with all of its darkness and ugliness and lies.

And she knows Gwen wants to go home, or back to what Gwen still thinks of as home, the pretty house of lies that Jack built. She doesn't know how to make Gwen feel better about what they are now, where they are. She knows it's rubbish, this entire life is rubbish. She can't offer a fancy underground base filled with wonders and a pterodactyl. All she has to offer is a box of stolen chocolates.

"Gwen, look, this one's filled with jam, I think. Don't you want it?"

Gwen pushes it away, so Suzie eats it instead, a burst of tart sweetness on her tongue.

"They're good. Please try one."

She holds it up. Gwen looks at it for a long moment. There's longing in her eyes. 

"You have to _live,"_ Suzie says, desperate, pleading. For both of them. Not just for herself. And she hasn't lived for anyone but herself in a long time.

But no one has ever chosen her before, either. No one has ever taken her side. Not her father. Not the people who were coworkers, never friends. Not Jack bloody Harkness.

"Please," she says softly. "Please, we'll just ... we'll get through this, and we'll decide what to do about Torchwood, just ... please?"

She holds the chocolate against Gwen's dry, cracked lips.

And after a long moment, Gwen's lips part, and Gwen takes it from her fingers, carefully, so carefully. Suzie feels that unfamiliar tenderness overwhelm her, threatening to drown her, and she leans forward and kisses the edge of Gwen's chocolate-smudged mouth. She can already feel the jolt of the sugar picking her up, lifting her. Gwen needs this too.

"Another?" she says hopefully, and Gwen picks one out for herself this time.


End file.
